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From a contact sheet from a photo shoot for a proposed
'humorous book on life as a witness'

Introduction

The Harvey Matusow Archive is a vast and eclectic repository of potential
interest to anyone researching twentieth-century American politics,
cultural history and underground movements. Separated into two distinct
collections, the first is an archive of papers relating to Senator
Joseph McCarthy’s Communist ‘witch-hunts’ of the
1950s, the second documents underground culture (art, magazines, music)
of New York and London in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Together,
the two halves of the Harvey Matusow Archive colourfully illustrate
the extraordinary career of a man actively involved in both, whose
political affiliations were as eccentric and volatile as his cultural
interests. The material spans the 1940s to the early 1970s and is housed
in over a hundred boxes.